Corrections from the Teacher

 

4/9/23 initial sketch

One evening I made a ballpoint portrait of a girl from the Drawing Earthsworld Challenge Facebook group. When I finished, I thought her features looked OK, and when I remeasured the proportions, they weren’t too far off . . . but something was definitely amiss. Unlike with the raccoon I had sketched on another evening, I had more energy to see if I could figure out what the problem was.

Studying the reference photo more closely, I saw that a key problem was that I had positioned the eyes wrong. The face is almost a profile, but it is turned just enough that the far eye is visible – and the two eyes are not aligned in a straight horizontal line from this view. (This is an easy error to make – the brain always wants to align two eyes or make them symmetrical – and I have made it frequently.)

I remember in Gary Faigin’s portraiture workshop several years ago, he would walk up to my easel, ask permission first, then proceed to make corrections that seemed so obvious as soon as he made them. “Now why didn’t I see that??” I’d be asking myself.

So, as an instructor might, I took out a red pen and corrected the eyes. That change required that other features and proportions be corrected slightly. Now I think it’s closer to the reference photo. (You thought I had exaggerated the hair, didn’t you?)

Red ink corrections from the teacher.

Earthsworld reference photo

Drawing a portrait is always good practice. It’s a small breakthrough, though, when I can see my mistakes and correct them on the spot. It means I’m finally becoming my own teacher.

(Incidentally, when the Facebook group’s moderator had mentioned International Mullet Week as an introduction to posting a new mullet image each day, I thought he was joking – but no! It’s a real thing!)